


Sweet Like Cinnamon

by kimaracretak



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Recreational Drug Use, and canonical mid-series kinda death, major spoilers for anything past mid-season 2, talk of canonical pre-series death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 02:11:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(how do you like me now?): They don’t fill the empty spaces inside each other. They don’t even try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Like Cinnamon

There was a time when, if you had asked Elizabeth what her life would be like after Zoe, she would have laughed, and asked you what you were on - could she have some? And she’d go home, pour a drink or roll a joint, fuck her girlfriend against the couch until they’re breathless and giggly and oh so painfully alive.

+

Here’s the reality: life without Zoe isn’t life, not really. 

+

Susan wanted Talia out of her life until she realized that the woman was an inescapable presence. More: she’s a presence that Susan finds herself actively seeking out, waiting for a glimpse of platinum-blonde hair in the Zocalo or a flash of sparkling blue eyes. Talia makes her remember words like _love,_ makes _future_ sound like a promise instead of a condemnation.

+

When what remains of Talia has been escorted off the station, Susan doesn’t even have the memory of their one night together to ease her pain. All she can think of is how there was no way to know where her mouth ended and Talia’s breasts began, where Talia’s thoughts ended and hers began, and she still didn’t know.

+

_I should have stayed. I could have saved her._ The stars don’t hear her.

+

_I should have realized. I could have saved her._ The vodka doesn’t answer her.

++

Susan thought she would hate the woman who took command of the station she had always thought of as _hers._ But Elizabeth’s different: magnetic, inspiring, and Susan thinks that maybe Babylon 5 is in good hands after all.

+

A lesser woman would call it destiny but they’re too similar not to make the choices they do that night. Broken in impossible ways, looking not for forgiveness or love but just an acknowledgement of shared suffering, neither will be able to say whose lips found whose first. It only matters that they do.

+

They don’t fill the empty spaces inside each other. They don’t even try. They don’t pretend that their bodies fit easily together. The angles are all wrong, the height difference more than expected, skin so warm to the touch that Elizabeth wonders if they’re going to burn each other to the ground.

+

She wonders if she’d care. She wonders if Susan would care. She thinks: _I don’t_ and there are too many ways to finish that sentence.

+

Susan bites hard against Elizabeth’s collarbone but her tongue against her wet heat is an apology.  Elizabeth’s fingernails claw streaks across Susan’s back but she licks _sorry_ across the planes of her stomach and thinks that they’re going to devour each other whole.

+

They can’t shred each other any more than life already has. They can’t put each other back together, can’t have the life that’s already slipped away. Each woman only has space enough for one ghost under her skin, that’s all.

+

There’s a gap in Susan’s mind where Talia used to be. She’s terribly alone and empty even as Elizabeth curls three fingers inside her.

+

When Susan comes, she whispers _Talia_ against Elizabeth’s slick skin, and Elizabeth bites her lip bloody trying to stop herself from saying _Zoe._

+

She fails, of course.

++


End file.
